Book #46: The Fault in Our Stars

Book #46: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

September 2, 2013


My list is going to be a little young adult oriented for the next few months. My YA lit course is in full swing already; this particular text will be one of four texts that I will be reading by choice, in addition to several assigned readings (I can slack off a little there, as I've read a few of them previously, including my all-time favorite novel, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak). I like YA lit; I gained an appreciation for it during my English methods course as an undergraduate. I've been very pleased with the enthusiasm that my current students have shown in sharing the books they've enjoyed (which will make my job much easier), so to placate them I'll probably have to read a couple of those, too. I'm absolutely fine with it, as long as these books are near the quality of my favorite, or this text in review.

The Fault in Our Stars has been highly acclaimed for the past year, and has been on my to-read list. Being in this course has given me a good excuse to read it; plus, a coworker (at a side job) loaned my a copy (I still have to get her my copy of The Book Thief, as a matter of fact). I did not find it to be as flawless as the aforementioned, but it was still a powerful, original, well-paced text, with intriguing characters.

This is a book about dying teenagers. Sick kids. Hazel has been suffering from cancer that has made her lungs almost useless. She constantly takes oxygen, and cannot be without it for more than a few seconds without suffering. She's come very close to dying, but during the events of the book, she's a bit more stable. At 16, she has been out of school for several years, has gotten her GED and started attending college courses. But she doesn't strive too hard to have a normal life. She knows that she is not normal. She reflects, in the book, that she'd like to just keep completely to herself, only spending time with her parents, because she doesn't want to be a "grenade." She doesn't want to hurt too many people when she dies (and of course, her loving parents will not be immune to suffering no matter what). But then, in her precarious condition, she falls in love.

I'll be honest in my assessment of the characters, because I feel like they would have respected that to some extent. I found them a little pretentious. Hazel is smart...Augustus (her boyfriend, the "great love of her life"), writes in a letter (to someone else) that she is, basically, smarter than everyone else. I wonder, if Hazel coming so close to dying has given her some kind of cynical maturity, or has given her depth that her healthy contemporaries would lack, or if she was always that way. That isn't to say, that I didn't like the characters. Hazel and Gus seem like good kids, and I like that they enjoy reading (even if they indulge in trash)...they are so passionate about one book, about a teenage girl who dies of cancer, that they travel all the way to Amsterdam to speak with the author, who has since become a reclusive alcoholic.

I saw Gus's death coming from a mile. See, he was the supposed "healthy" one at the start of the relationship. He'd come with his friend Isaac to a support group that Hazel's mother made her join. Isaac was Hazel's only friend in the group, as cynical as she at times. He was about to lose his only good eye to spreading cancer, and would be blind. Gus's cancer had gone into remission, or maybe close to it, after his leg was removed. He'd once been a basketball player, but after becoming sick and knowing that he would lose his leg, he reflected on how stupid it was in the large scheme of things. So in Gus's case, his personality and life view was largely shaped by his cancer. Well, I mean, duh. It was an interesting contrast, after his death, as Hazel read through the posts on his Facebook, old friends leaving comments about him shooting ball up in heaven. Hazel was annoyed at how shallow it all was. So really, Gus's experiences had given him depth. Even his parents, nice enough people, come across as shallow (at least in Hazel's view) in their talk of heaven and angels, and the inspirational shit all around their house.

Around the time of Gus's deterioration (because the cancer ended up spreading all over his body) and death, Hazel struggles to try to break away from her parents. It's not really that she wants to have an independent life, because it seems pretty clear that it would be impossible. Rather, she wanted her parents to have independent lives, and when she learns that her mother, who had dedicated her life to taking care of her sick, only child, was a few months away from a master's degree, she was relieved. She didn't want them to fall apart when she was gone. In contrast to Gus, who had fantasies of dying a heroic death, she wanted to die as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. She didn't think she was anything special in the grand scheme of things, though the few people who really stuck by her certainly though highly of her. And maybe that's enough for anyone.

Certainly, it's that sort of feeling that the author's Dutch assistant was hoping to inspire in him by inviting Gus and Hazel to speak with him. Peter Van Houten had only written the one book, and had fled the US to his family's native country, where he was slowly drinking himself to death. I could also predict that he was going to be a dickhead from a mile off. I was pleased with how that storyline ended, with Hazel telling him off, even after he'd traveled to the US to attend Gus's funeral and to try to apologize. She called him as she saw him, a pathetic drunk who had wasted his potential. He'd had a daughter who'd died of cancer at a very young age, and the grief had killed him. He was both a very wise and very foolish man.

I appreciated that the author did not spring the death of Gus onto the reading in the end, as a "twist" or something. I felt that it happened in a realistic way. I think that Green was attempting to tell an honest "cancer story," and in that, I think he succeeded. The ending of the story isn't exactly hopeful; Hazel will die, sooner or later. She'd been afraid to get involved with Gus because she thought her dying would hurt him, because his last serious girlfriend had died of brain cancer. He admits to her that he stayed with her for so long because she was dying, and he didn't want to be the asshole who broke up with a dying girl. Even as her brain fell apart and she became insufferable, he didn't want to hurt her. That was honest, too. He goes into the relationship with his eyes wide open, knowing that Hazel could die and it would hurt him, but they are so simpatico (they really are, they're so in love with their own cleverness and they just banter on, it's entertaining at times and cloying at others) that he is willing to risk the pain. In the end, Hazel is the one left alive and hurting, but she knows in the end that loving Gus and knowing him, for who he really was (what the cancer had made him...or perhaps what the cancer revealed?) was worth the pain.

At times, the writing is so poignant and beautiful. I found that this was in sharp contrast to Green's description of the kids playing video games. A couple of those scenes went on a little longer than necessary, though the description of Isaac's verbal game (which he played after losing his eyes, obviously) was very interesting. I was almost ready to write off this book after the first of those scenes. I was also ready to be annoyed when Gus had a pre-death funeral (with only Isaac and Hazel as speakers), as it reminded me of Tuesdays with Morrie, which is probably one of the worst books that I've ever read. But Isaac just rips into Gus (in contrast to his short, honest, and heartfelt speech at the actual funeral), which was funny, and made me reflect on how different this novel is from the terrible, terrible book that I was forced to read as a freshman in my first education course. I found Tuesdays with Morrie to be full of trite cliches about the "beauty of life," and all the crap that Gus and Hazel would scoff at, rolling their eyes and sighing deeply. And yet, even for their dismissal of all the sentiments of dying and the noble fight against cancer, they are honestly afraid of dying. In spite of some of the book's flaws (such as dating itself with pop culture references, a terrible habit of YA authors; or the editors missing that Gus's mother is called by two different names in the book...is it Cindy or Emily, people?), this is one YA novel well worth the read. I can understand the accolades, and I would say that they are well-earned.

I was going to put up an image of the original, as it's what Hazel wore on her shirt during her visit in Amsterdam. That's the kind of humor or logic that Hazel and Gus appreciate, while Hazel's parents don't necessarily "get it." I thought that the Mario reference added an extra nerdy touch.

This is where, in the book, Hazel and Gus have their first kiss. Seems strange, but hey, Anne Frank was kissed here, too...